Our ninth showing came and went without and offer. The ninth person said the house was #1 on her list, but was concerned about the maintenance of our private road.
We accepted that the house probably wouldn't sell before snow flies and we were talking to the fine folks who responded to my post asking for a house to rent this winter.
We decided that money was money whether we paid it for rent and heat and plowing, or took less for our house. I directed our broker to ask the ninth showing to make an offer taking her apprehension about the private road into consideration.
Her first offer was not as low as we had feared
. We thought she might come up a little, so we took a chance and made a counter offer. She came up more than we expected
. I wanted to try one more counter offer, but the advice of all those whose opinions I trust (my wife's, the lovely Diane's, first and foremost) said to take it. We accepted her counter and signed a contract last Saturday.
I was talking to a Villages friend about our contract price in an email and I made the comment that "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush". He corrected me by saying "a bird in the hand is worth everything, because there are no birds in the bush". He's right...buyers are scarce.
We didn't get as much as we wanted or as much as we felt our lovely home was worth, but we made a profit, we don't have a mortgage, and we can afford a home in TV that we will be happy with.
We have been shopping online for way too many hours ever since we signed and are flying down to TV over the Columbus Day holiday weekend to look at a few houses. There is a house we found that we really, really like the looks of, so we have to act fast as the best ones always go fast. Our deal could still fall apart, we know, but we had these two free airline tickets that had to be used before January 1, 2012 anyways, so off we go to TV this weekend! We may make an offer on a place contingent to the sale of our house. If all goes well we could be living in TV by the holidays!
Thanks to all for listening and thanks for your support.
Maybe our dream of living in TV...this dream we've had for over 12 years...the dream that got us through all those snowy, dark, cold days, and some hard times, and some health problems, maybe that dream is about to come true.
Kinda chokes me up, y'know...?